U.S. Air Force Needs Long-Range Strike

The U.S. government should be lamenting the fact that despite numerous warnings and sufficient international stimulus, it has failed to attend to the desperate need for robust, rapid, long-range strike capability.
As the military service charged exclusively with arming, training and equipping forces for air and space operations, with the exception of its airlift fleet, the U.S. Air Force has chosen to build a short-range, limited payload combat force. Its fleet of very effective F-22 and F-35 fighters are about to take center stage in the global arms arena. As capable as they are, with a combat range of 400 or so miles, they just don't fit the bill. Let's review:

The Opposition

We are still heavily committed to major combat operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan while ramping down our efforts in Iraq. Relations with China, the largest and second most militarily powerful nation on Earth, can only be conservatively described as "testy." It is rapidly building a military structure that its leaders hope will be able to keep American sea and air forces at bay during a not inconceivable conflict, including a ballistic missile designed to attack aircraft carriers well out to sea.
A paranoid, bipolar North Korean government is increasingly belligerent, having recently killed 50 South Koreans in military attacks. And in addition to its huge advanced conventional force, it is known to have nuclear weapons as well as a burgeoning missile fleet with which to deliver them.
Iran is genetically hostile to anybody in the Western world and reportedly on the cusp of nuclear capability, never mind its substantial band of conventionally armed fanatics.
Then there are a bunch of Mexican drug lords with more money with which to buy weapons than the Mexican government has. They are committing murder and mayhem right up to, and occasionally across, our border.
Have I missed anybody? And we are looking to our military forces - already to a large extent pinned down in Iraq and Afghanistan - to also keep a lid on this global menagerie of hostility.

The Home Team

The U.S. government has been building a military force that is exceptionally good at placing ground forces directly in harm's way to fight terrorists and insurgents. That's all well and good if the enemy is an insurgent with no sophisticated weapons, which many are. But some of our opponents are technologically savvy with powerful conventional and nuclear force structures that demand something substantially different than a boots-on-the-ground, infantry-heavy structure.
Critics have maligned even the latest generation of advanced but short-range combat aircraft for the wrong reasons. They are referred to as relics of the Cold War and the faceoff with the Soviet Union, too complex and expensive for what they say we face today: terrorists and insurgents.
The fact is, they are indeed effective against just about all our opponents, if they have sufficient range to get to where they can have some effect.
These same "experts" also often seriously question the need for a force component with the capability to fly farther than from Topeka to Chicago. But range is absolutely vital to a defense structure like ours designed to conduct expeditionary operations from long distances. We got that one wrong.
So, here's the big rub. This nation is just about broke. With a $14 trillion debt (ironically, mostly owed to our friendly neighborhood banker, the People's Republic of China), unemployment close to 10 percent, and overdue projects from dilapidated bridges to a foundering health care system, we are not likely to begin a crash weapon-building program to protect ourselves.
Those long-range strike aircraft we so desperately need to reach out and touch adversaries around the world are just not coming, unless we re-arrange some priorities. Even the fleets of fifth-generation fighters the Air Force has ordered are being drastically reduced.

Bitter Medicine

The only way to reverse a situation that has been a generation in the making is a change of strategy, requiring bitter medicine for the folks in blue who are managing what we may eventually see as a flying circus - good for air shows and moving ground forces and supplies around, but not much else.
Rather than relying on short-range aircraft that must be brought into close proximity to the adversary, making them and their bases vulnerable, we need to be able to cover global distances to carry our message to diverse adversaries from secure bases. That is the domain of the long-range combat aircraft: the bomber.
But they cannot be so expensive that we can afford only 20 of them. We've been there, done that. And note I have not said they all must be manned.
Yes, it would be very useful to have a massive fleet of both advanced fighters and bombers. That would truly put a lid on at least the aviation portion of many contingencies, but it is just not going to happen. The alternative is not to lock ourselves out of high-threat theaters by not having sufficient range and payload. It is to adapt range and payload to mission needs.
There are rumors of Air Force plans to build a new long-range strike aircraft over the next decade. We have heard that before. I question the service's commitment to this and the cuts in other plans that would be an inevitable result. And would Congress be willing to fund it if USAF leaders showed they would compromise on some fighter fleet plans?
It would signal a major shift in defense strategy. I just wonder if it's too late to switch horses